Moderation should communicate more meaningfully and take dates into account

[PeZsmistic]

@Scriptos

They keep closing threads immediately after replying as if they solved everything, without even giving you a chance to reply back.

Appeal threads for account moderation in the #moderation-review-requests category are closed immediately because the people who monitor that category cannot do anything. Replying is useless because no matter what you say, they still can’t do anything. Do note that they provide you the correct channel to go through when your thread is closed.

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Assets older than a few years should not be capable of causing you moderation action. The platform is old enough now that people from 2013, or even way back in 2007 have grown into completely different people. Moderating people for mistakes made 5-10 years in the past is absurd and does literally nothing to deter creating assets like that again. The only thing it does is make people furious and wastes their time.

[Scriptos]

Update: It is confirmed that this moderation is stuck on my account now, and all admins in the future will now see that I am associated with hate speech and harassment, all because I uploaded an image relating to a group that I was in many years ago. How is this okay?

I was redirected to email support in order to get help with this, but it is still proving to be very unhelpful, and this is what needs to change.

If there is no way to remove faulty moderation actions, then one really needs to be added. Players should not be associated with hate speech for uploading content that was allowed when they were 13 years old and are now in their 20’s.

[PeZsmistic]

If you asked them to remove the history from your account for DevEx reasons, they are correct in saying they cannot do that. If your actual concern is “will this affect my ability to DevEx?”, most likely it will not, as they take into account things such as this and will look at your entire moderation history.

[Scriptos]

That’s reassuring, but I still would prefer to not have this sticking to my account when it is no fault of mine. That’s why this is on the platform feedback topic - my feedback is that they should take action to prevent users from having an ugly moderation history that is purely their [Roblox’s] fault, due to not accounting for time.

Even if it does not affect DevEx, it does not sit well with me that I have a history of hate speech now. Hate speech is very serious, as is harassment. And I guarantee that I am not the only one that feels this way. Therefore, it seriously needs to change. Badly.

There are people out there that have very high levels of anxiety and stress. I personally experience a good amount of anxiety. Knowing that moderators out there in the future will look at me, or other innocent users, and see that they’re associated with hate speech, of all things, for uploading a perfectly acceptable image years ago, that just does not sit well with me. It makes me incredibly nervous, and I am now afraid to upload things.

[Dekkonot]

Would be really cool if the moderation screen at least showed the asset that was being moderated and when it was created. At the moment it’s ostensibly supposed to show the asset but in reality it just shows the generic deleted icon which is incredibly unhelpful.

[marcus760]

I am currently going through a similar situation. I have been playing Roblox for almost 11 years now, and I am a completely different person now than I was 6 or 7 years ago. I can confidently say that I behave completely different on this platform than my former 14 year old self, especially since I’ve been accepted on the developer forums. I feel completely paranoid every time I log onto this website, because any guy with a vendetta against me can report an old asset in my inventory which can result in a 3 day ban for hate speech. I can confirm that I haven’t done anything serious to break the Roblox community guidelines, however I still have bans on my account due to content that was completely acceptable years prior to my ban.

This is what I wake up to on my birthday:

Based off this screenshot, it is literally impossible to tell where I exactly violated the Terms of Service except for the shirt I uploaded, but I know exactly what this shirt was, and I managed to find it in my old videos on my old YouTube channel.

This is the shirt I have been banned for, a hockey jersey with the number 9 on it and the words “New Bloxton” on the front, which is the name for a fictional city I created on Roblox. The tattoo’s have no symbols or writing on them, for it is just a simple tribal sleeve, here is shirt I copied the tattoo’s from.

I’d like to point out I was 15 when I made this, and I wasn’t the best artist, so I used a lot of templates at the time instead of creating it myself. Also anything on the shoulder, or left arm was not on the shirt I uploaded. Just the right arm tattoo’s and the upper half was covered by the sleeve of the shirt.

With this information in mind, there is a very thin line between content that’s no longer acceptable. We are no longer notified if an asset is no longer acceptable on the platform. Instead the only notice we receive are bans, which almost 100% of the time is a hate speech ban. Now, according to the official Roblox Community Guidelines, what classifies hate speech is the following:

As far as my eyes concern, I see nothing on my shirt that offends a race, religion, disability, gender, age, or veteran status. It is a simple sports jersey based off a fictional city. I took my time to ask the moderators on this website, why was this moderated for hate speech, and this was the reply I’ve gotten:

Now if you scroll up to the previous screenshot of my 3 day ban page, you would see I titled the shirt “GS9 shirt 1”. However, even if this is gang related, I still recieved a ban for hate speech, which has nothing to do with gangs according to the Roblox Community Guidelines. Now that we are on the topic of gang affiliation, I’d like to point out that I’ve grown up around people like this, and I can confirm that modern day gangs no longer sport the typical red and blue outfits.This was a movement referred as “color banging” which died over 15 years ago. With that being said, the shirt has no color affiliation, nor does it have any gang affiliation. It is a typical Jersey, and had I titled it something like “Hockey Team” or “New Bloxton Hockey Gear”, it would have never gave me a 3 day ban. I feel as if moderators gave me no chance, and didn’t even take into consideration the date I uploaded this shirt, and the content that’s actually on the shirt. This shirt was uploaded 2015, and was approved because of its visual content, but 4 years later it was moderated because of the name given to the shirt.

Things like this happen too often to players on this website, and it is unfortunate, however I believe with the right staff taking this into consideration we could change things. Again, there is a very thin-line to what is acceptable and what is no-longer acceptable on this platform, and we aren’t informed of anything at all, nor do we have the feature to remove our own items before Roblox can take actions into their own hands. In cases like these, I feel as the punishment players receive is extremely severe. There are many alternatives and different ways the staff could’ve handled this situation, to where both parties are happy at the end of the day.

1. Roblox staff could’ve simply [content deleted] the name, and warned my account that names like this are inappropriate and not acceptable on this platform.

2. Roblox staff could’ve deleted the shirt all together, and warned me about the name.

3. Roblox staff could have personally sent me a message on the developer forums or emailed me about this issue, and I could simply change the name myself.

Another issue I would like to discuss is misrepresentations of my bans, as far as I am concerned is in the Community Guidelines, Roblox says nothing about gang affiliation in the hate speech category, however when I ask moderators why I have been flagged for such violation this is the response I receive:

Little to any information was given to how exactly I broke these rules, in a nutshell, when I asked how I violated the rules I was told: “You broke them and hate speech is bad so you will still be banned”.

I feel like the appeals team could do a much better job in this aspect, I feel as if they rarely check situations accordingly, and unless they are forwarded the complaint from someone on the developer relations team, they will not bat an eye to your complaint and will continue to give you bare-bone answers, and just repeat the same exact thing said when you log in your account:

It is very unfortunate when a veteran player for over 10 years and a loyal fan to Roblox has to experience such poor customer support. I am not trying to pick a fight with any of the moderation staff, but I am trying to gain justice for myself, and anyone else going through this situation by sharing my experience.

What I feel that needs to be drastically improved on this platform is the following:

1. Moderators actually look into things before they throw out bans.

2. When a complaint is given, its given for a reason, please second check before you instantly dismiss it. If I thought I deserved the ban, I wouldn’t waste my time or the moderators time by writing a complaint on the forums.

3. Please give us accurate reasons to why we received a ban. I am sure both me and @Scriptos scenarios have nothing at all to do with Hate speech, in my case it was gang-affiliation, however the community guidelines has no information that connects hate speech to gang affiliations. I’d be much more accepting of my ban had they said: Moderator Note: This content is not appropriate. Gang violence or gang affiliation is not allowed on Roblox.

4. Please give us better answers other than “you did bad, now you get banned”. Again, anyone that tries to write a complaint about this receives a 2 sentence reply by the NestofDragons. Now I know its very difficult to sit at a computer and handle complaints all day, I get complaints about exploiters every day in my game, so I don’t blame you. However, could you guys hire more people to work on this part of Roblox, hell, you really don’t have to hire anybody to be honest. I’m sure many of the community members would do this for free, I’d be happy to moderate things just because I am making the community a better place. (Not saying I’m fit for moderation but you get my point.)

I really hope someone of importance see’s my little scenario, and takes what I said into consideration. If this sounds like a rant or me being angry, I’d like to clear things that I am not trying to rant or bash any of the staff members, I am just trying to convey my message enough to where they actually take notice instead of just blinking and looking at the next complaint.

Thank you for reading, and have a blessed day.

[Scriptos]

Well said, you’ve explained the situation a lot better than I was able to.

[marcus760]

Expect this type of reply if you ever contact the moderation appeals team with facts.

And if you are wondering what the “previous information sent to you” was, it was this:

Which is the same exact information I got when I tried to login my account:

Again, more evidence that the moderation team needs to communicate more effectively, actually take things into consideration that they are damaging the community more than protecting it. It is just very frustrating that I, and anyone else has to experience this, and when told to make an appeal, they are greeted with terrible customer service.

I’d like to reiterate that this staff needs to actually look into the cases they are assigned. It is literally their job, and if it takes over 30 hours for one response, I expect my situation to be somewhat looked into instead of a dismissive repetition saying that I am banned for whatever I violated. I am extremely disappointed that a corporation and franchise of this prestige has this level quality of customer support. It makes me, as a player and a developer, feel very unwelcomed to this website. I’d like to point out that I dedicated many hours, hell I’ve been playing for almost 11 years, and to seem like the staff doesn’t even appreciate me, or even cares about what I have to say just really upsets me. I feel like I am just another person, my voice doesn’t matter, and no matter how much revenue I brought Roblox through my games (even though it wasn’t a lot), I still contributed in some way and I still brought smiles to many young players on this platform.

This is more than just a problem, this needs a serious reformation, and staff that work in this department need to be seriously re-evaluated or monitored closely. I recommend an overseer, that keeps track of all the emails that are being sent and all the conversations the appeals team take part in, to truly see what a mess this is. Again, this is constructive criticism, you can’t improve unless somebody is telling you you’re not good enough.

–Final Edit–
At this point in Roblox, I can estimate that almost all developers upload assets on an alternate account, because who knows what type of ridiculous penalty you may receive for something very innocent. Don’t believe me? Check the Moderation Review Request section on the forums.

[Scriptos]

Hi again, your nicely detailed post inspired me to completely edit the layout of my post. I also included quotes from you for suggestions at the bottom, since you worded it much better. Hope you don’t mind.

[marcus760]

Of course I don’t, I’m just glad I am not the only one going through this, I noticed if you looked through the Moderation Review Request, at least 30% of those request are “hate speech” bans for assets uploaded years ago. Hopefully our message is enough to actually make a difference and get a serious reform, because this is desperately needed.

[GeorgeOfAIITrades]

The problem with moderators is everything they say feels like a copy and paste. There is little to no human input in the words they give you. This is why I’ve always use Mod Review Request when I get flagged out for small text because I strive to know specifics. That being said, I’ve been asked in a DM on the DevForum that I instead start using appeals.

I.E. You keep posting the same mod review issue. We don’t wanna handle it anymore.

The problem I seek is that racecar decals have no text I consider small, but no one at the company ever wants to look an image for me and pinpoint how small too small is. So how the heck am I supposed to learn where the threshold is on an arbitrary rule like “small text?”

[TheKatorium (Katorium)]

I fully support this thread. I remember being in Roblox HQ the day they announced the new moderation feature and nearly every single person I knew in that room (who had a great understanding of the community) had a furious look on their face including myself. Yes, safety is important but it shouldn’t go as far as banning users for something as simple as uploading an image or word from years back you don’t even remember. I frankly too am frightened to see where the community is heading. To an extreme extent, Roblox’s attempt to keep the community safe could be the very things that destroys it. I do feel an overhaul of this system is needed if they plan to expand into 2020 where open communication and basic understanding of where to draw the line with moderation is.

[GeorgeOfAIITrades]

I will say, this current culture of taking something that isn’t that bad and turning it into something awful is what will kill us all. Look at Pepe the Frog. Pepe wasn’t bad. Then a few bad people used it bad, and it spread, and now Pepe in all contexts is considered “bad.”

Safety should be a large priority, especially after all the bad media cases we’ve had tarnishing us. That being said, there should be limits as to how far that safety shield goes.

[Dogutsune (Dogu)]

I agree. I did some Nintendo models in past before the DMCA thingy became a reality.

I got 2 warnings already for it and it makex me anxious.
What if I lose my acc because of PAST?

Not to mention I don’t know WHAT is moderated.

[Scriptos]

Update in regards to recent policy action: PewDiePie

We wanted to provide some context on the situation with PewDiePie. Roblox is committed to providing a safe and civil platform for our players, including blocking memes that represent or are synonymous for behavior that falls outside of our community standards. In December, “pewdie” became one of these negative memes on Roblox. As such, we began blocking the creation of new usernames that incorporated the term “pewdie.” The legacy account that PewDiePie used in his livestream was incorrectly ban…

On the topic of communicating more meaningfully, I feel like this is relevant. Although the situation was solved for this specific user (PewDiePie), the explanation for the ban seemed to only be found on this dev forum post stating that the name was blocked due to “pewdie” becoming a negative meme.

This type of information would be useful to have in the above image, rather than simply stating “your username is inappropriate for Roblox.” An improvement in moderation communication would prevent miscommunication such as what happened with PewDiePie’s fans spreading malice towards Roblox due to not understanding the nature of the ban.

Edit: Also, if the name was banned due to becoming a negative meme, then either prevent accounts from being able to use newly censored words in the first place. Don’t just terminate accounts because something has become censored AFTER account creation. Give those accounts a free rename along with an explanation or something.

[berezaa (Bereza)]

Working with around moderation policies and enforcement is one of the biggest pain points of being a developer on Roblox. I’ll always support efforts to make policy and enforcement more consistent and transparent.

[shayner32 (shayne)]

Content moderators are outsourced. They are given instructions on what is okay, what is bad, and then they set off and deal with asset approval (youtube videos, meshes, decals, audio, etc) and reports (in-game, on the site, etc). They wouldn’t be able to easily deal with something like this - like this instance, as far as they know (and are told), the shirt was against the rules. They don’t know the history behind the logo, they don’t know what the logo even IS, they just know it’s against the rules and to moderate for it.

Developer relations should be here to deal with the more complex situations like this one.

[Scriptos]

Unless you’re referring to one of my later posts where I go into detail about the logo that got me banned, this request isn’t about the logo itself, it’s about the age of the assets that we’re being moderated for (the shirt was so old that I completely forgot it even existed) and how the moderation ticket is displayed to the user. It doesn’t matter that they don’t know the history behind the logo, or what the logo even is. The fact that the logo was uploaded some crazy amount of time ago (I assume that they can view the upload date) should be taken in consideration.

I’m saying that moderation should take dates into account (which can easily be included in the given instructions to outsourced content moderators). The point of bans are to teach you a lesson and to prevent you from uploading any more inappropriate content. I don’t think banning people for things that they uploaded 10 years ago will teach them much of anything, aside from the fact that the moderation system is terribly flawed.

I get that a lot of the moderators may be outsourced and are given instructions and currently are not able to easily deal with something like this. You’re explaining how the current moderation system works. That doesn’t mean that it’s any good, or that it can’t be vastly improved. For example, improve the instructions given to the outsourced content moderators and expand upon the amount of information that they’re able to view (such as the asset’s creation date, if for some reason they are currently unable to see that). And the moderator notes are almost completely meaningless in a lot of situations, as they completely fail to explain why the assets were moderated, so I’d love to see improvement there as well.

I feel that Roblox could vastly improve on their communication with outsourced content moderators in order to make this less of a hassle.

(Also, I’m not sure if you read, but I did try developer relations for my specific situation and it was no help at all.)

[shayner32 (shayne)]

Regardless of the date, something can still be breaking the rules. Yeah, obviously you shouldn’t get banned for something that was okay a while ago, but just because it WAS okay doesn’t mean you get a free pass for it to stay up.

[Scriptos]

but just because it WAS okay doesn’t mean you get a free pass for it to stay up.

• Roblox staff could’ve simply [content deleted] the name, and warned my account that names like this are inappropriate and not acceptable on this platform.
• Roblox staff could’ve deleted the shirt all together, and warned me about the name.

I’m not saying that it should stay up. If something becomes inappropriate, it SHOULDN’T stay up. But that doesn’t mean that people should be banned for it, either. Just moderate the asset, tell me that something I uploaded 8 years ago was moderated, and move on. A ban on the persons account is unnecessary.